Let me post this here aswell...
In record numbers, city's residents say they `love' New York
BY KIRSTEN SCHARNBERG
Chicago Tribune
Mon, Dec. 26, 2005
NEW YORK - Everyone has seen them: the "I heart NY" T-shirts that tourists buy on their first visit to the Statue of Liberty or Times Square or the Empire State Building.
It turns out that New Yorkers themselves should be wearing the upbeat - if uncharacteristically unstylish - apparel.
A long-running poll that gauges New Yorkers' attitudes toward their frenetic, often maddening metropolis recently found that
61 percent "love" their hometown, the highest percentage in poll history. "This is an honest-to-God love affair, not just a casual affection," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut, which has conducted the poll since 1994.
Just four years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, when many predicted that hundreds of thousands of residents would flee New York and that those who stayed would never feel quite the same about a place now universally seen as a terrorism target, the poll found that just the opposite has occurred.
In addition to the 61 percent who say they love the Big Apple, another 22 percent say they "like" New York. Fifteen percent have mixed feelings, and only 2 percent describe their feelings toward the city as "dislike" or "hate."
"Why doesn't that 1 percent of haters just move back to Boston?" Carroll quipped.
The numbers have not always been so rosy for New York.
In 1999, just 46 percent of residents said they loved their city. Even more stark: When asked in 1994 how satisfied they were with "the way things are going in New York City today," just 3 percent said they were "very satisfied." That number in the latest poll is 19 percent, with another 56 percent saying they are "somewhat satisfied."
New York has long been a place that some outsiders love to hate. The people are too rude, they say. The pace is too hectic. The prices are too out of control.
Indeed, there have been years when even the most devoted residents of America's largest city had a hard time disagreeing with some criticisms - in the 1970s when the city almost went bankrupt, in the 1980s when crime was sky high and in the 1990s when the cost of living soared. In fact, at the turn of the millennium, the average cost for a home in Manhattan topped $1 million.
But a stunningly successful 1977 advertising campaign - the launch of the "I heart NY" slogan - has proved to be a timeless refrain among even those New Yorkers who occasionally grow frustrated with the place they call home, who critique it and its leaders, who grumble about pollution and who put up with disruptions like last week's three-day transit system strike.
"Listen, New Yorkers are realists," said former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who was elected to the post the same year the advertising slogan was introduced. "They know New York is not the most architecturally beautiful - that's Paris. They know it's not even the most interesting - that's London. They know it's not the cleanest - that's probably Chicago. But what distinguishes us is the electricity of New York."
Yet electricity alone can't explain the numbers found in the latest Quinnipiac poll. Electricity might lead to lust - passionate, short-lived lust - but not the deep love that 61 percent of residents profess.
The breakdown in the numbers also reveals that feelings for New York spanned gender, ethnic and political boundaries. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans and 62 percent of Democrats said they loved the city. Sixty-one percent of whites, 55 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics felt the same. Fifty-seven percent of men said they loved New York, compared with 64 percent of women.
"What's interesting is that this is a cross section of people both ethnically and socioeconomically," said Stanley Renshon, a New York psychoanalyst and professor of political science at the City University of New York. "This is not just Donald Trump saying he loves New York. It's Mr. and Mrs. Jones. It's Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales. It's Mr. and Mrs. Ling."
So from a psychoanalyst's perspective, what about a place can make people feel so strongly for it that they describe their feelings with a word often reserved for only the most important things?
Sept. 11 certainly plays a part, Renshon said. They love a city that has endured, a city that has persevered.
And, paradoxically, the very difficulties associated with life in New York - the struggle of finding a cab during rush hour, the sharp-elbowed sidewalks, the constant racket from the streets when trying to sleep at night - make people love it, the doctor said.
"That whole `If you can make it here you can make it anywhere' song lyric," Renshon said. "They take pride in making it every day, and that makes them feel good not only about themselves but about the place."
But most of all: New York seems to be a city on the rise.
The weekly wage of workers in Manhattan rose 5.8 percent in the first quarter of 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The city has had nearly a decade of declining crime rates, and the number of homicides has been more than halved since the early 1990s. Drug dealers and porn shops are no longer the staple fare of Times Square.
"This used to be a pretty rough town to live in," Renshon said. "It's no fun to worry that you can't get back to the bus stop after work without getting mugged. But people see how much safety has improved, how the economy is doing, how much the city has been cleaned up. They love a place that is clearly trying so hard to be better."
At a little street stand on Canal Street, in the heart of New York's teeming Chinatown, Mei Liu was selling the famous "I heart NY" T-shirts earlier this month. It was a cold day and she did not have many customers, but she folded and refolded her wares, making the display orderly and appealing.
"These are very nice shirts," said Liu, 36. "It is a very nice city. My life is better here than it was in China. My children's lives are better."
As Liu spoke, two taxi drivers nearly collided on the corner. One began screaming obscenities at the other. Liu just laughed.
"Most days, very nice city," she repeated.
© 2005 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.